The door seals shut behind me with a soft sound.
Not a slam or lock.
Just….final.
I turn, but there's no handle, no seam. Just smooth black stone, pulsing faintly beneath the surface.
The room doesn't look like much.
A square chamber. No windows. Not furniture.
Just silence.
Then the walls ripple.
And everything changes.
The air shifts, too warm now. The light turns amber-gold, like late afternoon sun filtered through linen curtains. I know this place.
My old bedroom.
The edges are too soft, too clean, but the feeling is the same—-tight chest, restless heart, the weight of not knowing what everything felt wrong even when it looked right.
I step forward.
The floor doesn't creak here.
It just remembers.
The room shivers again. The warmth vanishes.
Stone returns.
But not this chamber.
The Ritual chamber.
The air thickens instantly. I see the runes. The broken circle. The spot where I knelt, where the bond bled back to life and burned the truth into my skin.
I remember the pain and then the relief.
The mark pulses faintly beneath my shirt, like it remembers too.
I turn away—-
But the room shifts again.
And this time, it drops me straight into the memory I've been trying to forget.
The moment I lied to him.
I'm standing across from Justin, the ritual circle faintly glowing between us.
His eyes searching mine.
His voice breaking.
And mine—
"I don't feel the same. It was never real."
The words echo, louder than they were that day. Like they've grown sharper in the silence.
The memory-me looks calm.
But now, I feel it in every inch of my body—--the fracture I caused. The hurt I chose.
I step back.
The echo doesn't stop.
I press a hand to the mark, and it burns—-not painfully, just enough to remind me it's there. That he's there.
"I didn't mean it." I whisper.
Not to the memory.
To myself.
To him.
"I said it to make it stop. I didn't know what it was. I was scared."
The room listens.
Everything stills.
And then, the walls fade—disinegrating like dust caught in golden light. The stone reappears, cool and quiet.
The door opens.
Not because I passed a test.
Not because I proved anything.
Because I stopped lying.
To him, myself, and the bond.
*******
The Courts
The crystal wardstone had not pulsed in over two decades.
Now, it cracks—-slowly at first, then all at once, sending out a thin shockwave of magic that ripples through the oldest trees in the heart of the UnSeelie wilds.
Three fae stand in silence before it.
They do not speak.
They do not need to.
The youngest, a slender female with eyes like silver frost, tilts her head toward the stone.
"It's her."
The elder male beside her narrows his gaze, lips curling with distaste. "We burned that thread. Years ago."
The third fae—-the quietest, wrapped in ash-colored robes—-steps closer. His hand brushes the air above the broken stone, sensing the energy that still lingers.
"No," he says softly. "You may have buried it. But you most certainly didn't kill it."
They all feel it now.
The pulse.
Not strong—--but steady.
Not loud—-but present.
And familiar.
"A mating bond." The silver-eyes one's voice darkens. "Flickering like it's trying to decide if it should live or die."
"And the girl?" the elder asks. "She's still in Nox?"
"For now."
The third fae finally turns, eyes glinting with something colder than fear.
"Then we need to act."
The air thickens with shared understanding.
Sarah's survival was never supposed to be a possibility.
Her awakening now complicates everything they have worked so hard for.
But this type of bond reawakening?
That's a whole new threat.
********
The golden mirrors that line the walls of the Hall of Radiant Accord shimmer all at once.
A subtle ripple.
A pulse through the wardlight.
Not enough to panic the court.
But enough to still it.
At the center of the chamber, Hight Lady Alette lowers her goblet, eyes narrowing toward the fractured glow in the mirrored glass.
"What was that?"
No one answers immediately.
Then, from the far end of the table, the Lorekeeper rises.
His voice is quiet, but certain. "A bond. Awakened."
A low murmur spreads. Disbelief. Intrigue. Displeasure.
Alette doesn't move. "A mating bond?"
"Unfinished," the lorekeeper replies. "Dormant. Flickering. But yes——old magic."
"From Nox?" Someone asks, disgust barely hidden.
The mirrors ripple again, just once.
Confirmation.
A younger courtier, dressed in autumn-toned silks, speaks up: "It's the girl, isn't it? The one you sent there for her trials?"
Another chimes in: "The one bound to him."
Alette's expression shifts——cool, unreadable.
"She was never meant to uncover that bond," she says. "And the UnSeelie Court will not be pleased to know he has become more than just a tool. The son of a traitor, sent to clean up his family's failure."
"She denied the bond," the Lorekeeper says. "It should have died with her choice."
"But it didn't," Alette says sharply.
Silence.
A moment passes.
Then she leans back into her chair, fingers tapping once on the armrest.
"So the girl has passed her tests in Nox, the bond still breathes, and the UnSeelie's could act first."
She looks to the Lorekeeper.
"Where does that leave us?"
The Lorekeeper tilts his head. "Watching. Listening. Preparing. We must know first if the UnSeelie courts are behind everything."
"And if the bond holds?"
He meets her gaze.
"Then she's not the threat. He is."
*********
The halls fell different now.
They're not warmer. Not softer. Nox is still sharp-edge and cold. But the resistance is gone.
The walls used to press in when I walked——when Freyr watched, guided, commanded.
Now they part.
Not dramatically.
Not with reverence.
Just enough.
Like the realm knows I don't need permission anymore.
I walk slowly, fingers brushing along the stone. The veins of magic beneath the surface hum——not Freyr's threadworrk, but something older.
It pulses with my mark.
Each step syncs with it.
For the first time since I arrived, I'm not being pulled. I'm being followed.
Something watches.
Not Freyr.
Not a guard.
I don't speak to it.
But I think it hears me anyway.
When I reach the junction at the end of the corridor, two paths open.
One is familiar——Freyr's direction. The path that always led to rituals, trials, control.
The other is dim, choked with shadow, lined with carvings I've never seen.
The kind of place I was told to never go when I was little.
I don't hesitate.
I take the second path.